Russian Mail App Appears To Have Attacked Android Devices

A while ago, Samsung Android users noticed that a strange app appeared to be installed on their devices without their knowledge.

To make the matter worse, the users had troubles removing the app. The app that caused some panic amongst Samsung users was named "МТС Мобильная Почта" (MTS Mobile Mail). In order to investigate the source of these troubles, we need to look at the bigger picture.

Samsung ships its devices with already installed apps that are not available for other users. However, every app in Google Play (formerly known as Android Market) has a unique identifier.

At least, this is how it is supposed to work and the recent issue was apparently caused by a breach of this simple rule.

Russian developer OJSC Mobile Telesystems gave the unique identifier to its "МТС Мобильная Почта" app and Samsung devices believed that the app was an update of the default email client, coming from Samsung.

When the problem was solved, Google admitted there was a bug causing the Russian app to appear in the My Apps section for Google Play. The company is now working to fix the issue.